tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post2725575815198096274..comments2024-01-16T03:42:46.705-05:00Comments on The Downward Spiral: Media Shocked, SHOCKED, To Learn That Millennials Are Less Environmentally ConsciousBill Hickshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17551954408189665078noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-87146400124049291042012-03-20T15:06:38.215-04:002012-03-20T15:06:38.215-04:00Why would they care about the environment, Bill? P...Why would they care about the environment, Bill? Protecting it stands between them and their precious consumer electronics.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-88565506737415890232012-03-19T15:33:20.304-04:002012-03-19T15:33:20.304-04:00Simpson's nailed this back in the day: http://...Simpson's nailed this back in the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pje34fUgLQ<br /><br />Classic.Lew Stewellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-82999169414229385092012-03-19T10:57:00.089-04:002012-03-19T10:57:00.089-04:00Good post, especially about the cynical coolness o...Good post, especially about the cynical coolness of Jon Stewart/Colbert. An excerpt from a brilliant related essay by David Foster Wallace:<br /><br />Make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us.<br /><br />Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? “Sure.” Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, “then” what do we do?<br /><br />Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady’s bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-25360912787208660382012-03-19T10:37:35.326-04:002012-03-19T10:37:35.326-04:00You were right to read that study with a skeptical...You were right to read that study with a skeptical eye, Bill. I read a better de-bunking than these I just googled for, but I can't remember where. Anyway, I think this amounts to Jean Twenge trying to sell books, and the media, being lazy, just reporting anything that has a good headline to sell papers.<br /><br />http://www.energyactioncoalition.org/press-release/twenge-youth-study-environment-total-sham<br /><br />http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/16/1075062/-Shallow-deception-in-anti-Millenial-study-Gail Zawackihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01800944469843206253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-82830963305957587052012-03-19T08:44:44.153-04:002012-03-19T08:44:44.153-04:00They're too busy texting meaningless mindless ...They're too busy texting meaningless mindless gibberish.Megadoomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06507132110939297753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3862216000300765627.post-64755973391884116822012-03-19T08:11:35.785-04:002012-03-19T08:11:35.785-04:00Great post Bill, one of your best. Your are 100 pe...Great post Bill, one of your best. Your are 100 percent right there is a bizarre modern cult of the moron. A cult that elevates loud vacuous idiots to the status of heroes and disdains knowledge and intellectual curiosity as the signs of boring old cranks.<br /><br />I remember MASH and Roots, that was the golden age of TV. I was recently looking at the BBC series World at War made in the 1970s about WWII, brilliant TV.<br /><br />One of the really strange things about modern documentaries is the way they keep repeating themselves. They tell you something then five minutes later they tell you again, then ten minutes later they tell you again, and so on. In 1970s documentaries they tell you something then assume you will remember it. Modern documentary makers assume their audience are a bunch of morons with really short memories, which maybe right, but I always find this endless repetition very annoying.irishwildeyehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13653892284914268881noreply@blogger.com